Critical Reception
Nancy Erlick from Billboard said that the song felt like " The pin-up girl in character; part saucy, eager to please." Alex Henderson from Allmusic, commented that "Rodger's gift for sleek, seductive dance music is evident on such gems as 'Dress You Up'." Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic, called "Dress You Up" an excellent, standard-issue dance-pop. Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Freya Jarman-Ivens, authors of Madonna's Drowned Worlds: New Approaches To Her Cultural Transformations, commented that Madonna sounded like a "sex-kitten" in the song. Sla Cinquemani from Slant Magazine called the song irresistible. William McKeen, author of Rock and roll is here to stay, said that the melody of "Dress You Up" was insistently chugging. Debby Miller from Rolling Stone said that "Despite her little-girl voice, there's an undercurrent of ambition that makes her more than the latest Betty Boop." While reviewing the album in 1995, Dave Karger from Entertainment Weekly commented that the song came off as a bit repetitious and immature. Jim Farber from the same publication commented that "the song was built to transcend the Dynasty era."
While reviewing The Immaculate Collection, Alfred Soto from Stylus Magazine commented: "Like A Virgin's Top Five absentees 'Dress You Up' and 'Angel' do a better job than the two big singles of delineating the boundaries of Madonna's determined shallowness, an act that confounds Philistines today and made the appreciation of her musical skills a lot harder than it took these critics to dismiss Cyndi Lauper as the real charlatan." In 2003, when fans were asked to vote for the top twenty Madonna singles of all time, by Q magazine, "Dress You Up" was allocated the eighth spot. The video was nominated at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, in the category for Best Choreography, but lost to "Raspberry Beret" by Prince and The Revolution.
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